"A combination hard-boiled murder mystery and existentialist lament on the meaninglessness of modern life.... Based on a real murder in 1944 involving two early members of the proto-Beat gang, Lucien Carr and David Kammerer, Hippos recounts the so-called 'honor slaying' of the older, homosexual Kammerer by the young, blond and incredibly handsome Columbia University student Carr....Hippos, which by Kerouac's own account was 'hidden under the floorboards' for decades, is an essential document of the Beat Generation—filled with precise details and precisely recorded dialogue from a place and period, pre-Atomic Age America, now almost irretrievably lost to us." —San Francisco Chronicle
